


a part of him that was always there

by ghostinthebook



Category: The Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Coming Out, Demisexual Julian Blackthorn, Demisexuality, F/M, POV Emma, Post-Book 3: Queen of Air and Darkness, but julian and emma are the only ones there, little bit of POV Julian at the end, mentions of many other people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 10:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19789204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostinthebook/pseuds/ghostinthebook
Summary: Julian tells Emma that he's demisexual.





	a part of him that was always there

**Author's Note:**

> i am not demisexual myself, so please tell me if i portrayed this correctly. i would like to see more fics about Julian being demi, and how he learned what the word was, and all that. he's canonically demisexual, guys! anyway, the rating is for language, and i hope y'all enjoy!!!!!!

“Hey, Emma?” Julian asked, sticking his head into her room.

“Yeah?” Emma replied, looking up from her phone and to her boyfriend.

Julian was her boyfriend. It still didn’t feel real, all the time, that Julian wasn’t her parabatai anymore. They could finally be together now, completely legal and accepted. He was her boyfriend, even though that word couldn’t even begin to describe how close they were.

“Can we go grab some coffee?” he asked, catching her attention again. His eyes were as beautiful as always, his shirt had a tiny bit of paint on the edges, his hair was a little messier than usual-

And he looked nervous.

Fuck.

She pretended like she hadn’t noticed his nervousness, and agreed to go. He left the room, and as she changed and got ready, she thought about his nervousness.

Why would he be nervous? Yeah, there was the whole Clave-in-Exile situation, but they agreed to not worry too much about it at the moment. Ty wouldn’t be leaving for the Scholomance for a while, so he shouldn’t be worried about that now. Helen and Aline were fine, Mark was fine, Ty was fine, Livvy-

Emma quickly stopped herself from thinking about Livvy. She could think about her later, when she had time to cry and deal with her own emotions. Right now, she had to think about Julian.

Anyway, they were all okay. Dru and Tavvy were fine, Dru even made a new friend lately. She knew that Julian had worried sometimes about his siblings not having a lot of friends, outside of people like Cristina, and Kit, when he was still there, and little Max and Rafe.

And fucking Malcolm, when he was pretending to be a good person, that asshole.

She also quickly stopped herself from thinking about Malcolm. She’d want to punch something, and she wasn’t in the mood for punching.

As she brushed her hair, she thought about parabatai.

The one thing she missed about being Julian’s parabatai, she thought, was that she was able to tell exactly what Julian was feeling, without even being in the same room as him. If they were still parabatai (she shuddered slightly, at that thought), she would have already known he was nervous.

Which brought her full circle, wondering why he was nervous.

The only remotely stressful thing he’d really done lately was visit the New York Institute for a few days. Was it something that he heard there?

Or maybe she was totally misreading things, she thought as she went down the stairs. She was going off of a glance of his face for a few seconds, not an entire conversation. Could be anything.

She saw his face as she entered the car, still nervousness hidden under a smile, and maybe she wasn’t misreading things.

He probably wanted to say something at coffee, she thought. She should just wait until they’re there, and then they’d talk.

She didn’t think it was a we-should-break-up conversation, or something like that. They had been through too much for that. And Julian was smart enough to know that a conversation like that shouldn’t be done over coffee.

Before she knew it, after twenty minutes of mindless conversation in the car, they were there. They went up to the counter, both of them ordering some version of iced tea and sandwiches. It was a California summer, getting a hot coffee would be murder.

They sat down at one of the various tables in the place, with their teas and sandwiches that were just the tiniest bit burnt on the edges, and Julian looked like he was preparing himself to say something.

“You know about different sexualities, right?” Julian asked.

Huh, this really wasn’t going where she expected it to go, Emma thought.

“Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure. Gay, bisexual and pansexual, stuff like that?” she answered. She had no idea where this conversation was going. She sipped her tea through the straw as Julian continued.

“Well, there’s more of them. Like asexual, and demisexual.” He paused, looking her right in the eyes. “Like me.”

“You’re… demisexual? Right?” Emma asked. At Julain’s nod, she asked another question. “What’s demisexuality?”

“Basically, I don’t feel sexual attraction to anyone unless I already have a strong emotional connection with them. Same with romantic attraction, in my case. I talked with Magnus when I was visiting New York, asked him some questions. He explained it, and… yeah. I’m demisexual.”

“Oh,” Emma responded. “That makes sense, actually. Awesome.”

She gave him a thumbs up and a smile. She didn’t know the right way to respond in this situation, so she hoped that her reaction was okay.

It did make sense. He had told her that she was the only person he had ever felt attracted to, so him being demisexual fit perfectly.

Julian looked like a weight had just been taken off his shoulders as he smiled back.

* * *

A few days later, Emma walked into Julian’s room, hands behind her back.

“I found this online, and it just came today,” she said, moving the object she was holding from behind her, to in front of her.

Julian recognized it.

It was the demisexual pride flag.

White, purple, gray, and a black triangle.

“Thank you,” he said, grabbing the flag from her. He looked at it, smiled.

He leaned forward and kissed Emma, proud to be who he was.

“I love you,” he said, as the kiss broke apart.

“I love you, too,” Emma replied, smiling back at him.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is ghost-on-paper, and i hope you guys enjoyed <3


End file.
